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RWBY: Remembrance (Review)

I will not mince words here, this episode brought me close to tears. Very, very close. The sort of sadness that begins with your heart in your mouth as you realise what the writers are doing and suddenly feelings that had lain dormant for about eight months come flooding back in a wave of sadness and emotion and my god this is just a web series for gods sake pull yourself together Izzy.

However before we get into why that is, although you’ll know if you’ve watched the episode which is what you should have done before reading any articles like this on the subject, we’re going to talk a lot about Weiss and her big reintroduction scene this season, as well as life at Casa Schnee and the new characters we’ve been introduced to there. We have her little brother, who seems precocious and potentially irritating despite seeming to be a good kid so far. I can so easily project myself into Weiss that I felt exactly what she was going through with that conversation with Whitley, specifically a slight but noticeable embarrassment that her brother is being so nice to her. Her father seems mostly what I expected, controlling in his aspirations for Weiss, guilt-tripping her into singing (hopefully Mirror Mirror part 3, but then, that’s partly why I expected Jacques to be like this, Mirror Mirror has made Weiss always feel like a character trapped in what she grew up in), potentially quite evil but in the way that he’ll be a nuisance and a big nuisance at a critical moment, perhaps. And while I’m on this point of the episode, I must say I appreciate Ironwood’s stubble, makes him feel that much more human. Even though he’s a cyborg. The politics, the dust embargo, it is nice to get more on the inner workings of the kingdoms and clearly set out how Papa Schnee is clearly very concerned with playing the system to his own benefit more than anything else, very Littlefinger of him. Actually no, more Tywin, because he’s very concerned with his family. I am a huge Game Of Thrones nerd, excuse me, that will probably dominate this blog when it comes back round again.

The butler, Klein, seems possibly the most interesting part of the household, with his different eyes and different personalities, he’s obviously going to play a part in upcoming episodes although my predictive skills are at a loss to say exactly what, right now he seems a trusty ally for Weiss in this world she wants to escape.

Over back to RNJR and they’ve got quite a difficult and emotional episode, after they have more playful banter about Jaune being a bit girly they find that a village that he knows well has been destroyed and he says, in a very impactful way, that he’s sick of losing everything. Firstly, this is great because it addresses my concerns in the last episode that this region outside the kingdoms is supposed to be harsh and dangerous and the destruction of an entire village out of the blue aids that, although having said that, this wasn’t a random Grimm attack, bandits came first and disrupted the harmony allowing Grimm to come in. If this is a similar story across the kingdoms then the bad guys are doing their work well, those bandits were likely not just raiding for no reason, considering what’s gone on lately.

Secondly, it adds a lot more weight to the scene later, what is the highlight of the episode and, I know there have only been two episodes so far but definitely the highlight of the volume too. Ruby finds Jaune, late at night, practising his sword work with the help of a recording of Pyrrha. Now obviously that is easy tear-jerk material but I don’t care, it is effective. Initially I was wondering when Pyrrha had the time or inclination to record this but that is offset by the brevity of the material, Jaune has to keep replaying it because this tiny recording of advice is the only thing he has got left of Pyrrha and as she repeats her mantra of ‘keep your grip tight, don’t forget to keep your front foot forward’ and especially ‘I want you to know that I’m proud of you [and] I’m happy to be a part of your life and I’ll always be there for you’, I dare you to not even have a thought of sadness. Jaune’s emotions play out on his face clearly and it’s just really wonderful to behold. This area of the storyline needed a scene like this, it is brilliant, it was always going to be brilliant and I’m starting to accept the death of Pyrrha. As a good thing for the show of course, I still miss her dearly while trying to imagine the world in which she’s living.